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Today we’re breaking down exactly how much you need to spend each year on travel and dining before it makes sense to get the Sapphire Reserve over the Sapphire Preferred. First, we’ll give you the numbers; then we’ll break each scenario down piece by piece.

If you redeem Ultimate Rewards directly through the Chase Travel Portal, or value them at 2¢ per point, and spend:

You spend at least $300 per year on travel – The simple fact is, if you don’t spend $300 per year on travel, then neither of the Sapphire cards are for you. The benefits of both cards are focused almost entirely on travel including the bonus categories, transfer partners, travel protection perks, and the Sapphire Reserve travel credit and lounge access benefits.

You’ll hold the card you get for the long term – The annual fee on the Sapphire Preferred is $95, whereas you’ll pay the $450 yearly fee on the Sapphire Reserve starting with year one. We’re assuming you’ll hold the card for the long term and the figures reflect the year-over-year return on spend when you pay the associated annual fees.

If You Redeem Points Through the Chase Travel Portal

The two Sapphire cards have different fees for authorized users, different earning rates on bonus spend, and different redemption values through the Chase Travel Portal, so we’ve put together a table reflecting all the figures with which we need to factor.

† $2,750 is the breakeven point without an authorized user
†† $6,500 is the breakeven point with one authorized user

If You Transfer Points to Travel Partners

As you can transfer Ultimate Rewards from both the Sapphire Reserve and the Sapphire Preferred to the same transfer partners at the same ratio, the potential value you can achieve from this strategy becomes a moot point. Why? If the cent per point value of the transfer/redemption is the same for both cards, then we only need to know the difference in the earning rates.

The only difference is the one additional point the Sapphire Reserve earns on travel and dining, as they both earn one point per dollar on non-bonus spend. In this case, we’ll give Ultimate Rewards an arbitrary value of 2¢ per point, and focus the calculation on how much you need to spend on travel and dining to make up the $55 difference in annual fees.

The higher the value you place on Ultimate Rewards, the less you need to spend on travel and dining to make up the $55 difference in annual fees. An easy way to work it out is to divide the difference in annual fee by the value you place on Ultimate Rewards.

For example, if you value Ultimate Rewards at $0.02 per point: $55 / $0.02 = $2,750

If you value Ultimate Rewards at a higher or lower value than 2¢, divide the difference in annual fees by that number. If you value Ultimate Rewards at 3¢, the equation would be $55 / $0.03 = $1,833.33 to break even with the Sapphire Reserve.

Final Thoughts

Whether you transfer points to travel partners or redeem through the Chase Travel Portal, the breakeven point will sit between $2,000 and $3,000 unless you only redeem for ultra-high-value luxury redemptions such as first-class international flights. Before you decide to get the Sapphire Reserve or the Sapphire Preferred, run the numbers based on how much you spend in the travel and dining category to determine which card is best for you. If you spend more than $230 per month, the likely scenario is you’ll be better off getting the Sapphire Reserve, and that’s without factoring in perks like lounge access, global entry fee credit, and superior travel protection!

Doing the Math: Sapphire Reserve vs Sapphire Preferred

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Last year we loved the CSR since we did a lot of traveling and really made use of the priority pass and precheck. This year we got it again via my wife and haven’t used it much at all (this reminds me that we need to get my wife PreCheck). It’ll still be worth it in the end, but sometimes I wish for the simplicity of having gotten the CSP this time around. We will definitely not be renewing it next year.

There’s no doubt that for me. the Sapphire Reserve is the best deal. Although I do use airline miles for travel, I much prefer using my UR through the travel portal. The flexibility of any flight I want to take and the ability to earn points and achieve status has been very helpful in my travels, especially during irregular operations.

Not sure how you can just throw away the lounge access benefit and completely missed all the other added benefits of the CSR like the better car insurance coverage, trip delay insurance, trip cancellation insurance, the better redemption of chase points on other Chase cards when paired with the CSR etc. This is a travel/points web site, how can you assume people reading it get zero additional benefits the CSR offers? All of these benefits are easily worth the extra 55 per year annual fee to anyone that travels on a plane, cruise, books a non refundable hotel or rents a car even once a year which you assume they do to get the 300 credit. Its that simple. Very flawed analysis with unnecessary math calculations solely on when you break even just on a 1/4 penny point earning redemption rate.

It was simple to throw away the extra benefits — they’re not easily quantifiable. What if you don’t care about lounge access or you only fly business class and have lounge access for free? What if you have insurance that covers you?

Focusing just on the numbers and the spend makes it easily quantifiable. If you get value out of the other benefits it is subjective — we can’t say exactly what lounge access is worth, nor can we say what insurance is worth. While you say it is easily worth the extra $55, and I personally agree, we wanted to analyze just the numbers and only the numbers.

Thanks for this great breakdown! I have been debating which to go for for several months now and am still a little undecided. As with a lot of the rewards cards the value can be in how you personally use the card, so doing calculations based on the “minimums” you did in this post is a nice baseline to see a cards worth, even if you never take advantage of any of the other benefits. It gives a nice starting point for an individual (me!) to work from when deciding which card will be best!

Unfortunately I am over 5/24 and can’t get the Reserve. Is it worth it to try to product change my Preferred to a Reserve? I definitely would love my Ultimate Rewards for Hyatt and United points transfers. I already have an old InK Bold.

Throwing away benefits because you can’t put a fixed value on it down to the pennies may steer people to the wrong card. Clearly there is value to anyone that travels (insurance on one ticket alone or 2 days of car rental is worth that) of the CSR benefits for the 55 extra fee so it doensn’t just come down to total spend which is the main point of the article.

I definitely appreciate you wanting to keep things simple and quantifiable. But it’s important to highlight the potential value of certain CSR card perks. I often forget, for example, that with the associated Priority Pass, I can bring TWO guests into a lounge for free. Given most lounges have free booze and food, this can help offset that $55 very quickly!

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